Jozef Imrich has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut

Saturday, May 29, 2010

You do something wrong, FATCA shoots your neighbor- As Seen on Google

Google has grown from an idea generated by two students at Stanford University in 1998 to one of the world’s most well known and successful companies. Liane Hornsey, Director of People Operations for Europe, the Middle East and Africa says that the company would not have been able to innovate as quickly as it has, nor create the products it has in such a short space of time without highly valuing employee engagement ; - The Wikileak video spread like wildfire across the internet and what next this week? I'm not a wealthy man, but I'm rich in my convictions The West Needs a Good Dose of Perestroika -‎ Nothing Beats Helen Womack ‘s Analysis During the Cold War, oppressed political dissidents around the world often had an easier time getting human-rights groups to advocate for their freedom. Today, however, it seems that dissidents often fail to garner the international spotlight they previously held. The reasons are manifold--ranging from the politicization of human rights to economic globalization to moral relativism.Launching the Labour manifesto for the recent British election, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stood against the backdrop of a golden cornfield and promised a future fair for all. As I watched, I was struck by a powerful sense of deja vu. Where had I seen and heard all that before? Yes, of course, the Soviet Union circa 1980 — the old propaganda that spoke of bumper harvests and five-year plans fulfilled and overfulfilled.

A fresh page was turned in Prague on April 8 when Medvedev and the US President, Barack Obama, signed a treaty to reduce Russian and American stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons. Before that, Obama had cancelled a Bush-era plan to deploy ballistic missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, a prospect that had unsettled Moscow. The treaty was seen by some defence experts as a "one up" to Russia, but others saw wider benefits for the West in the politics of win-win and the new goodwill wafting from the Kremlin.

• Back in the CCCP - USSR ; Moscow Times [It was the greedy free market, supposedly, that created both the housing bubble and the housing bust and led, inevitably, to the “great recession.” Capitalism, according to most liberal pundits (and even Alan Greenspan in a bad mood), is an inherently risky and unstable system that requires government regulation to correct its flaws and moderate its excesses. Crony Capitalism Is NOT Capitalism ; Faking It Won't Make It ]• · Nothing beats a quiet Sunday afternoon in the traditional book store. Last week I whiled away a couple of hours at two of my favorites – Daunts and Hatchards. Daunts is the best travel bookshop on earth, while Hatchards has five floors of imaginative, beautifully selected, beautifully laid-out books... Nothing Beats Book Stores ; George Clooney and Up in the Air have a lot to tell the employers about the downside of reducing face-to-face contact. Efficiency and savings are often illusory when it comes to computerizing and centralizing businesses. Sydney Expo and Up in the Air ; You thought only conservatives got mad about taxes? Tea partiers, eat your hearts out: A group of liberals got together Tuesday and proved that they, too, can have a tax rebellion. But theirs is a little bit different: They want to pay more taxes. ; Law students and the consumers of legal services like to think that professors are hired by law schools on the basis of pure intellectual ability and achievement. No doubt, individual intellectual ability and achievement play significant roles in law school faculty hiring. However, another important dynamic is overlooked, wealth • · · Chris Masters in the Telegraph writes about gang violence in Melbourne and Sydney in a story headlined 'Why Sydney's hitmen are deadlier'. Under the usual pictures of the Ibrahims, Morans and the late Michael McGurk, he explains various motives behind the violence and deaths, including the practice of an underling serving jail time for a superior but not being properly rewarded after release. ; hitmen Underbelly 3 - The Golden Mile, set in Kings Cross, debuts this Sunday, Channel 9 8.30. It gets a rave review plus some great site Kings Cross footage on The Australian • · · · THE Sydney underworld's war without end, the ongoing battle for temporary supremacy, has in recent years featured the most visible members, bikies. The clearest evidence that the jungle rule book of old has been torn up comes from the prisons. Chis Master; Hell on Wheels; Underbelly; I HAVE a particular affection for my Australian friends of Middle Eastern background - they seem imbued with a special generosity and. zest for life • · · · · The reframe is powerful; arguing in favour of envy would appear as difficult as opposing hope, faith or charity The politics of envy ; Planning laws and lobbying NSW Inc • · · · · · Founded on a growing evidence base that working is good for health Arbeighcht; It is a fitting coincidence that this new chapter in our tax history coincides with our centenary and in preparing ourselves for entering our new century of tax and superannuation administration! tax history ; Well, it's a good thing I'm rich and famous on google

Creating a healthy happy world John Hatton Empowering Communities - Matters of Amazing Grace Having looked at history and done theory on happiness in recent blogs, here’s a top 10 from Dr Mike Pratt to pin to your wall Happiness – 10 Key Things We Know

Creating a healthy happy world is a worthy pursuit which we all have a stake in. It’s something academic colleague Dr. Mike Pratt has been working on to evolve Peak Performance theory. This week I have three posts based on Mike’s recent work, and for starters here’s some historical ground from the deep delvers:BC 384-322: Greek Aristotle strikes it long and deep: Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence • BC 341-270: Greek Epicurus hits the pleasure button (Epicureanism), and gets tagged as a supporter of hedonism. To his credit, he said you have to draw the line somewhere. • On sweeping levels, Buddhism and Islam develop powerful paths to happiness. • 13th century, the Italian Roman Catholic priest Thomas Aquinas weighs in with: “Every man necessarily desires happiness.” • 1711-1776: the Scot David Hume high five’s Aristotle’s view. • 1776: The American Declaration of Independence includes the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right. • 1748 – 1832: Englishman Jeremy Bentham defines happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain. An advocate of utilitarianism, he describes natural law and natural rights as “nonsense upon stilts.” • 1806 – 1873: John Stuart Mill works up utilitarianism with Jeremy, and focuses on actions that generate pleasure. He says OK to different types of pleasure, and pumps ‘higher pleasure’. • 1818 – 1883: Karl Marx sees happiness as the ultimate destination, achieved through crashing the lead vehicle. • 1844 – 1900: Friedrich Nietzsche says happiness is something for British Shopkeepers. Ronnie Barker’s sitcom alter-ego, the grocer Arkwright, to double negative, wouldn’t disagree. • 1879 – 1955: Albert Einstein compares moral aims like well-being and happiness to the ambitions of a pig.• 2000 – 2010: Happiness gets pondered, indexed, studied, measured, blogged and tweeted about.

• Stand by for more about his happiness… [ The Inquisition: the Wood Royal Commission ; FORMER independent MP John Hatton has called on the Southern Highlands to be awake to political corruption and incompetence. Mr Hatton, who in 1994 led the push for the Wood Royal Commission into police corruption, which will see him played by John Waters in the latest Underbelly series. Corruption buster, John Hatton, to give talk on empowering communities ; The average person in the community has every right to feel powerless; Not one to mince words, former Independent MP John Hatton had a public meeting of close to 150 people taking notice Not one to mince words, former Independent MP John Hatton had a public meeting of close to 150 people taking notice ; Underbelly; Underbelly ] • · It's wonderful to unexpectedly stumble upon a kindred spirit – or at least a person who holds a worldview eerily similar to your own. This happened recently when I came across the work and writings of Gunter Pauli, who is about to release the English language version of his book, The Blue Economy ; 15 April 2010 marked the 6-year anniversary of TaxProf Blog • · · Sarah Palin's contract discovered by two students to speak at Stanislaus college includes private jet and expensive hotels…MUST BE a r larger for West Coast Events; or, a Hawker 800 or larger for East Coast Events and both are subject to the Speaker's approval Lear 60 ; NYU Hosts Reading Today of Dan Shaviro's Getting It Following up on my prior post, the NYU Graduate Tax Program is hosting a reading and discussion today of the new novel by Tax Prof Daniel N. Shaviro (NYU), Getting It (iUniverse, 2010): Bill Doberman is a liar. He's also a conniver, a phony, a hypocrite, and a cad -- and those are his good points... Evelyn Waugh meets John Grisham. Hilarious and gripping ; The tax bar is commonly referred to as a "special priesthood," and it is only slightly more tolerant than the Catholic Church in ordaining women tax priests. -- Paul L. Caron Special priesthood• · · · The 3 most critical skills for managing a remote team, Wayne Turmel, bnet.com, 1 March 2010. The author suggests that managers of 21st-century teams need the ability to: create human connections quickly, know what tools to use when - and how to use them, and create loyalty; A blog launched today provides the public with an opportunity to participate in the development of the Rudd Government's Standard Business Reporting (SBR) program...the blog provides a online forum for businesses, reporting professionals, software developers and the broader public to discuss SBR issues Lindsay Tanner ; Standard Business Reporting Open for Comment ; The new social media policy recognises the widespread influence that blogs and wikis have within the community, and that of course includes our staff whom we want be alert to the potential risks of identity fraud and other threats. DIAC Use of the web New social media policy to guide staff online activities; It's all the rage for ministries and agencies to have a Facebook or even MySpace page these days. Governments are going where their citizens are. So why bother having a web site at all? Will Facebook profiles replace govt web sites?,• · · · · Arkadi Kuhlmann, Ivey Business Journal, March-April 2010. Arkadi Kuhlmann, Chairman and CEO of ING Direct USA (America's largest direct bank), describes the steps that he took, and that other leaders can take, to build a distinctive and dynamic culture Culture driven leadership ; Over the last eighteen months of economic turmoil, leaders, and their ethics, morals and judgement, have been scrutinised and questioned. Leadership and its role in business, politics and wider society has been the subject of great debate. Leadership challenges ; In the new movie Date Night, Steve Carell plays tax lawyer Phil Foster, who is married to Claire Tina Fey CODA: The ninth edition of "As Certain as Death -- Quotations About Taxes," the collection that I have assembled and published in Tax Notes over the last 16 years. It contains 1,577 quotations, a 426 percent increase over the 300 quotations that made up the first edition in 1994.... No matter how cynical you get, you can never keep up. A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can depend upon the support of Paul … [T]axation, in reality, is life. If you know the position a person takes on taxes, you can tell their whole philosophy. The tax code, once you get to know it, embodies all the essence of life: greed, politics, power, goodness, charity.A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right. As Certain As Death -- Quotations About Taxes

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Most of us do not like risk and uncertainty. That's too bad, because there's no shortage of either. Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down. Living at risk is taking a leaf out of Elie Wiesel's statement: to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all
Small swimming strokes and walking steps towards a much better world... That is sometimes the sins, moral failings and dark truths of the human condition find a home at Media Dragon...The hard core irony will undoubtedly be lost on some except gals and guys at the Google news, but by failing to reach NY Times reviews, Cold River, a book of a lifetime, succeeds brilliantly. Without any doubt the story of the human race is war
... “If a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr

We are in love with our own sins ...
We are not the boys we used to be. We are no longer desirable, We are off-putting in some way. It’s not just that We have put on weight, or that our face are puffy from the drinking and the lack of sleep; it’s as if people can see the damage written all over us, they can see it in my face, the way we hold ourselves the way we move ...

Maybe we are crazy. Maybe we will change the world: If you live life to the point of tears every Negative has a Positive, You just have to look for it. Blogs Help to filter the world ;-) Without Struggle/No Freedom ...

Sole survivors might often be thought of as anonymous, but we never want to be voiceless. Why true stories and icebergs say so much ... The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. Till taught by pain or borders less travelled, men really know not what freedom's worth: # Each Age Calls forth its own Bohemian Voice...

Sandra Cisneros tells us, Write about what makes you different.
Your readers want to see the world through your eyes ... A sole survivor explores the world where the 'other' fears to tread and creates the most unlikely true story you'll ever read. You are different and so is Cold River:

There may be no greater act of bravery for someone with a fear of needles than to donate blood. Of course, it's this kind of giving that is so important to maintaining the Red Cross's life-saving stocks

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist, wrote Salman Rushdie. The Iron Curtain came down since Rushdie's novel, the Satanic Verses, earned the Booker Prize-winning novelist death threats, but the question persists.

MEDIA DRAGON We search the world ... So you can read thoughtful and down to earth media dragons at one place

Can one person make a difference? It's easy to be cynical about the power of one. But a person's importance, so difficult to quantify in life, is perhaps more easily measured in death – and the gaping holes left behind